Soft Flash
New Releases
by Anise Hollingshead
February 1998Good news for Arthur and DW fans! In September, Microsoft is releasing two new Actimates, Arthur and DW. Actimates are interactive plush toys that can either be played with separately, or together with a TV pack or a PC Pack. They each will have a vocabulary of 4,000 words, which will be expanded by adding either the PC pack or the TV pack. The PC pack will enable you to interact with the official PBS Arthur web site and the software titles that will also be coming out this fall. The TV pack will interact with the television series Arthur through specially encoded signals being broadcast on the show. Hooking up to the TV will increase the Actimate's vocabulary to 5,000 words, and the web site will increase their vocabulary to a whopping 10,000 words! Wow! Cutting edge technology isn't cheap, though, and the new Actimates will run about $110 each. The PC and TV pack will retail at $54.95, and the three new software titles will be $34.95 each.
Wanta dispense with those pesky shipping charges? Edmark has a new line of early educational programs that you can download directly from their web site for $9.95 each. They can either be standalone software, or be incorporated with Millie and Bailey's Kindergarten. There are 6 titles to choose from: Calendar Clock, Jellybean Hunt, Earth Scout, Sorting Station, Symbol Sandbox and Time Twins. In Calendar Clock, an animated movie allows your child to move forward or backward in time, while teaching about units of time. In Earth Scout, kids ride on a rocket ship and learn about maps, globes and oceans. They can also print out an outline of the view from the rocket window, and will be asked in Question and Answer mode to find and photograph specific locations. In Jellybean Hunt, kids learn about left and right, and also cardinal directions by navigating an ant through a path of jellybeans. The napkin is viewed either from the ant's perspective, or an overhead view. In Sorting Station, kids sort rocks, fungi, and animals into groups and learn scientific classification, as well as improving observation skills. The Symbol Sandbox teaches map symbols, and allows your child to either match a symbol to an existing sandbox creation, or make their own creations. Time Twins teach how to tell time on 3 different levels, hour, half-hour, quarter-hour.
If you are a fan of choose your own ending books, you may like these new titles from Brilliant Digital Entertainment: Cyberswine(teen), Popeye and the Quest for the Wooly Mammoth (3-8), Halloween Party (preteen-teen), and Night of the Werewolf (preteen-teen). These Multipath Movies are more like movies that you can manipulate, than a game. You are presented with two choices at certain points in the movies, and the movie takes the path that you choose. Designed for MMX (but playable without MMX), these titles have truly amazing graphics in 3D. There will be additional titles released later this year, including Gravity Angels (young adult), two more Nightmare titles, and another Popeye title. These titles are priced very reasonably at $4.95, and if you own one, you can just purchase a ticket to view a new one, and view it online.
KD Review - Grownups Place - Kids Home - DownloadsCopyright © 1998 The Kid's Domain
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